Since Thursday afternoon since we have a pope And no: none of the predictions or the occasional Vatican experts' predictions were correct in predicting that the chosen one would be Robert Francis Prevost, a Chicago native but a Peruvian national. In fact, they didn't even come close. And no, the Church hasn't initiated the counter-reformation, as the vast majority of the prescient predictions predicted, nor has it fallen into the hands of the ultra-Catholic sectors that, according to some, had an unbeatable offensive prepared. And no, Pope Francis must not have been as disorganized or as idiotic as some painted him, because the conclave has given continuity to his doctrinal, pastoral, and political legacy. If this had happened after the pontificate of a conservative pope, a crowd of analysts with their eyes rolled back would be talking about the subtlety of a two-thousand-year-old tradition of diplomacy, etc. However, if it happens when the time comes to hand over the reins to a progressive pope, it turns out to be a fluke. The unwritten law of automatic lowering of appraisals when progressives reach—or maintain—levels of power is therefore once again imposed.
The phrase in the title has been widely repeated and commented on these days, and in that same newspaper I already analyzed it on Friday, Antoni Bassas. But it's necessary to repeat it, because they are important words: they are words of power. It's a position, a call, and a declaration of principles and objectives, all at once. Harm will not prevail. Many would have to grasp this deeply, to understand it intimately. It's difficult, because it would have to begin by understanding that their power as rulers is sterile if it is aimed at evil. Worse than sterile, it's harmful. Worse than harmful, it's abominable. William Blake, the poet who was in contact with invisible beings, already said: "He who can do and does not, creates pestilence." This was not the case with Francis, and from what can be seen in these first stages of his pontificate, Leo XIV clearly intends that it will not be the case in his own either. Evil is not merely the absence of good, as theological doctrine argues, which states that everything that exists is good, by the very fact of existing, and that therefore evil, in essence, does not exist: good would be, from this point of view, substantial, while evil would be insubstantial, and even non-existent.
But it exists, of course. Evil isn't just hatred of others: it also has to do with banality, negligence, and foolishness. It's important to identify it, not laugh at its jokes. It's lethal to think you're smarter than others. Evil is death, but death, as another poet, Dylan Thomas, understood, will not prevail either. He left it written for us in these verses, which we read translated by Miquel Desclot: "Knots, all dead men will be one / with the man in the wind and the moon in the west; / when their smooth bones have melted / they will have stars at their elbows and their feet; / if they go mad, they will keep; if lovers are lost, love will live on;
